Sourdough croissants (inspired by txfarmer)
Anybody who's seen txfarmers sourdough croissants knows it doesn't get much better so having recently booted another round of stsryers and having a bit of an aversion to sourdough bread (just due to flavor) thought I'd give txfarmers formula a shot. So far although nowhere near in the ballpark of txfarmer I'm pretty happy and think I may havw found a good challenge. What I like about the sourdough formula is the added elasticity it seems to provide to dough. What I have discovered with croissants is that final proofing can often result in the dough tearing especially along the top fold. I would often see about 1/3 of my croissants rip in the last 30 minutes of proofing which results increally sad croissant. In this case you can see some nice bulbous loaves here - would love to see the crumb open more but still this is encouraging and the beginnings of hopeful improvement seems to be in the works. For the record these are the traditional French lamination technique of one double fold and one simple fold which ends up as 12 butter layers and 13 dough layers. Additionally the butter that folded in is exactly 50% the flour weight. Last week I decided to give 2 double folds a shot with a little less butter (40%) and was rather disappointed. With that said it seems fewer layers, generous butter seems to work better. The o,my regret here was not bakkng on the top rack,as I know thats the hotter zone in my oven and think there would likely have been l a more open crumb but oh well, not upset, a step forward is always rewarding ;)